As electronic book readers become more sophisticated, and as the cost of technologies that are capable of producing rich media content decrease, providing rich media content to an audience is becoming more important. Traditional books are having a more difficult time competing with the content that is available through the Internet. And as electronic book readers become more commonplace, the demand for books printed on paper is going down, leaving authors with fewer opportunities to publish their works in a profitable fashion.
Much of the rich content that is available through modern technology is not accessible to an average author. Although modern electronic readers are being produced with increasingly sophisticated abilities, and markup languages such as HTML, HTML5, Javascript, and XML have been simplified through various applications, the level of technical sophistication required to incorporate rich content into a published work is beyond the abilities of most authors.
Another shortcoming of modern authorship is the lack of a format for collaborative efforts and continuing additions. The Internet facilitates websites where multiple authors can post their works, but a good system for controlling the contributions of multiple authors to a single work, especially with regards to rights and revenues, is lacking.
Formats accessible through the Internet are not well suited to reading on electronic book readers, and are often cluttered with unwanted advertisements and links that are present to provide revenue for the website.